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Thursday, July 5, 2012

Does Multiculturalism Breed Intolerance?

From the author: of “Never Mind Yaar” a thought provoking analysis on whether multiculturalism is breeding intolerance. KayEm feels "For
most of us, it isn’t the desire to preserve one’s own traditions or
culture that is the bigger problem. It is the use of violence to
preserve it, to preserve any culture anywhere in the world
that disturbs"......

Courtesy - presstv.ir

The majority of Norwegians let him know that unequivocally.

He gunned down 79 Norwegians – all helpless, all innocent, all harmless and full of LIFE and fun. To my mind his reason for doing it was warped. He only wanted people of his own kind to be in his country and no one different. So he killed people of his own kind. This is the reasoning of a terrorist if ever there was reasoning from one. Kill my own kind to save the world from the different others.

The end, that of letting the world know his point of view, justified the means. The means were his plotting for over a year and then putting his plan to kill some wonderful human beings into action. He snuffed out their young lives, destroyed their families by causing them unbearable anguish and then stood vulgarly in court facing the victims’ families trying to seek his moment of justification, fame and glory.

He said he was against the policy of multiculturalism and for letting “Muslims into Norway”. If we can force the government to break down multiculturalism by killing just 70 people that will preserve our values and prevent war in future. He felt the victims were being indoctrinated for multiculturalism by their leaders – the Labour party. Most of the victims were the youth wing of the Labour party.

What a worm; what a warped mind; what a disgraceful, sick, miserable creature to believe he had the right to kill other human beings to get his message across.

Here’s what the Huffington post had to say. When Breivik addressed the court, he lashed out at everything he finds wrong with the world, from the Labor Party's immigration policies, to non-ethnic Norwegians representing the country in the Eurovision Song Contest and the sexually liberated lifestyle of the characters "Carrie" and "Samantha" in "Sex and the City." These are the ideals that are presented to our sisters and daughters today," he said. "They should be censored and removed from our society."

Ask whoever was left to grieve over the loss of family members at his hands and they would repulse and reject his calling them his “sisters and daughters” with all their hearts. He was their killer and as one victim’s mum put it, she hoped she would never have to see his face again and that he would just disappear from Norwegian society into jail forever.

Which brings me to what Breivik didn’t like - multiculturalism. There are so many in the world who subscribe to the view that their own culture is the only one to live by. Most of them might despise others who are different but on the whole, they are peaceful and abhor violence.

Let us talk about India. We have hard core Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Tamilians, Christians, Parsis and in fact, hard core traditionalists in every community that lives in India. They feel theirs is the only culture that is truly gracious, the only religion that will give them a passage to heaven and theirs is the only language worth speaking. They might live side by side with the hateful “others”, send their children to the same schools and even work with them but only because they have to. If they do speak about these others, it is only to heap scorn on their differences.

Most of the rest of us are quite happy to live side by side with people from other cultures. We have this easy going attitude of live and let live and are comfortable with our differences. What’s more, we feel free to indulge our curiosity for and enjoyment of the huge variety of traditions and cultures we have always lived side by side with.

Here’s a strange phenomenon. We might be easy going about other cultures but we are really proud of our own. Imagine someone trying to criticise anything about our heritage, our khandaan, and see how quickly that puts our defences up. It is curious because this pride we have in our own unique culture simply cannot be explained away by reason or logic. It just is, wherever in this world we might be.

Then why blame someone trying to preserve that “uniqueness”? There are many reasons. Many of us grow up understanding that our liking for individuals is irrespective of culture. When youngsters fall in love with someone from a different culture ask them what they would give up easily – their desire to preserve their “uniqueness” or their friendship? When I watched the movie, “Bombay” I know I wanted the two young lovers to be happy together irrespective of the fact that one was a Hindu and the other, a Muslim.

For most of us, it isn’t the desire to preserve one’s own traditions or culture that is the bigger problem. It is the use of violence to preserve it, to preserve any culture anywhere in the world that disturbs. It goes against our core humanity. To witness carnage and bloodshed sickens us. The majority of Norwegians spoke out against Breivik for that very reason.

They spoke out against the violent methods he adopted to highlight the “problem” which isn’t to say they spoke out for the immigration of people who they perceived as different, into their country. That is a separate issue. It remains a problem in many countries today, including India. Why, I hear you ask, is it an issue in India? In India, we already are a multicultural society. We’ve had people of different cultures, religions and languages (say at least seventeen languages and 5 to 600 dialects?) living side by side for hundreds of years. I might even be justified in adding peaceful co-existence has been an issue with us way before it became an issue for some other countries. Their problems of trying to assimilate people of different physical appearances and from different religions and cultures started in earnest after WWII. It is fairly recent.

In India, we’ve been multicultural since centuries with a large number from every community suspicious of the “others”. And as we all know, of late, many of our hard core traditionalists have resorted to violence to uphold their own values and traditions to the exclusion of all others.

How do we, the secular minded Indians, the ones who don’t feel threatened by the presence of other cultures in our midst address this issue? On two fronts.

First, to try and understand why our traditionalists feel threatened and overwhelmed by other communities, why some of us have these nameless fears and prejudices against the others, I’ll let Bharati, a student of Gyan Shakti College tell us what she thinks.

Second, to solve the issue of violence because of racial prejudice, we have two options. First, we must denounce it. Not to do so is to condone it. To condone something that goes against our basic human values eats away at what makes us human.

Secondly, we need ongoing discussions to try and resolve this issue. It has come back to haunt and hurt us repeatedly and open discussions and debates will throw up a few more urgently needed ideas to stem its growth. Perhaps Aamir and the makers of SJ are listening?! Perhaps this is what will give our non-violent but communal minded Indians the strength to speak out against violence within their ranks too.

73 comments:

what had happened in Norway is indeed unfortunate .But The main actor in this drama has been caught and brought to trial .well plain speaking it sometimes is easy to do so when you have a countable population and a manageable geographical limits. Our India we boast of multi cultural , secular and democratic thoughts .....are we indeed???. I cannot talk for all but it is a common feature that a student or anyone from the northeast in any part of the country has definitively faced the word " Chinki" thoppoed in his / her face at some point here or there . wow my /our fault to be close to the mongolian line of human race. God are you listening .........why???.

So they have chinki eyes, Parsis have a hooked nose and so many of us are trying desperately to lose weight. Our physical appearances might differ but we all have amazingly similar thoughts and feelings. Hopefully most of us in this day and age recognise that fact. Don't despair, RK, perhaps we can help the ones who don't, overcome their prejudices and look beyond the mere physical.

Powerful post Purba. Yes we are staunchly defensive about our culture, our way of life and will defend it. But to take a step forward and try to kill people to establish the supremacy of our culture is extreme.

Destroying other people's precious lives to get his message across is incomprehensible to most humans. Right now CS, your name could apply to anyone trying to understand his reasoning or grand standing or narcissism or whatever it was.

The guy is mentally sick. Sometimes it bothers me that there are similar people in India too. We have had enough riots in the past to underline the fact that we as a society are not very tolerant of each other's community and religion. Somehow I feel this is a basic human nature to be robotic about the supremacy in the way we are bought up. And then sometimes delusions of such supremacy gives birth to such monsters. He is not different from Hitler.

It is not only in India but countries around the world that are much more insulated and do not really welcome outsiders. Look at the fear of Muslims among the Europeans or the banning of burqa in France. And, look at the impunity with which the Muslim world differentiates among even its own; the others are not even considered human beings.

That fear of other communities does exist everywhere as you rightly point out Rachana. Changes can only happen when the open minded from within a community speak up and let their opinions be known to their own kind.

Unfortunately, so many people in India are unable to draw the distinction between violence and non violence. Protest is ok. Disagreeing is ok. One might even say that hating is ok. But do it all non violently if you want!

Freedom of expression is there for a reason. So that you have an adequate outlet for all your feelings. Violence is entirely unacceptable. We need to make that amply clear.

You are so right BJP :). How to make the violent ones understand that is our major problem (further complicated in India because of politicians using their services.) But we could try and make our own understand it is unacceptable to us.

A very mature look at sensitive issue dogging us. Tolerance is the key to live in peace and harmony. Live and let live should be followed strictly. Unfortunately those with vested interests do not subscribe to this and keep inciting violence for their petty gains.

It's indeed unfortunate that some blokes resort to violence to prove their point.

However, I've always ascribed to a conspiracy theory that there are certain individuals who reap maximum economic benefit out of such events, which is why they continue at such scale. Money finds its way to organizations that promote such violence. Such money, at such scale, can not be donated for free. Who gains? Certain businessmen by eliminating some competition?

If that is the case, then multiculturalism is just an excuse for violence, a cover-up for an actual target.

There will always be hardline extremist organizations - it's on the basis of their monetary support that they become mainstream topics that you and I discuss over this blog!

It is way beyond the realm of possibility that we'll individually change these practices of profit at any cost, Karthiday. We've all heard how tax payer money goes into individual pockets, how "donations" are made to cut out competition etc. As I've said earlier, we can only stop people from within our own community (perhaps even just family) from being violent against others for starters. As for the former ills, IAC was and can still be our India Shining. Perhaps we could start by visiting their website http://www.indiaagainstcorruption.org/index1.html

Warped minds and warped behaviour, KayEm! The acts of a lone fanatic - no matter how tragic the consequences - are less worrisome than the acts of organized groups and political parties, which polarize society in order to establish their presence.

Organised violence and political parties polarizing society to establish their presence. That is exactly right CS. Bullseye. And we cannot fight them as individuals. We'd be eaten for breakfast if we tried.

appreciate the sensitivity with which you have approached this question. in some cruel and inhuman ways both multiculturalism and intolerance are mechanisms to strengthen us as a species. it is perhaps best understood when we look at how 'high art' looks at popular/populist art. why does life have to be so complicated...

If it is to be survival of the fittest, SD, let it be survival of the secular, the open minded and the tolerant. We've lived side by side with too many others for centuries to want it to be different. As Bharati of Gyan Shakti college said, the common umbrella we all share is that of our humanity, guided by the laws of our city.

I suppose, the only answer I can think of is to strike a balance. One extreme is to insist the "others" assimilate completely and the other extreme is to keep away completely from the others. Most of us fit in somewhere inbetween. And as you said, violence is no answer. Thanks magiceye.

Need of all times is to refuse inheritance of hatred at a personal level.Rigidity of thoughts,stagnant beliefs and above all extreme efforts from parents to pass all that in the name of 'CULTURE' on to the next generation is the root cause of aggression .It has to change at a personal level first and then passed on to the next level.

Parents who are blinded by prejudice are bound to pass it on. But if there are open discussions about the issue (on tv, radio, chat shows, blogs, newspaper articles) their kids have the opportunity to see another angle. And I feel the discussions first have to be about why there is prejudice and only afterwards about who exacerbates it and for what reasons.

Hasn't violence been an integral part of the history of the human species? Look at any time of the history and see whether it has been free of violence. Even in India people fought one another in the name of tribes, caste, princely kingdoms...

I wonder whether there is any real solution to this - except civilise mankind!

You are so right, Mathekal. As long as there are more than one human on earth, there will be negative emotions like jealousy, envy, anger, fear etc but there are ways to express those and violence goes against the core of most of us. What helps is facing ourselves honestly in the mirror and trying to understand what and where our fears and feelings of inadequacy stem from, who encourages them and why. Then we might be able to come up with a better way to express them.

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